• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

So Jafar wasted his first wish, right?

Winston1

Winston1

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
2,109
Watched the original Aladdin yesterday and this occurred to me. Once Jafar acquires the lamp, his first wish is to become sultan. All that seems to do is just give him a fancy new pair of clothes which he ditches 30 seconds later. Jasmine and her father still refuse to acknowledge him as ruler, so it clearly did not change anyone's minds or reality. So then Jafar uses his second wish to become the most powerful sorcerer to make them respect and fear him.

Why not just use that as his first wish? It would have accomplished the same thing in allowing him to take over Agrabah, and then he'd have two extra wishes to save for a rainy day. If you want to say that he wanted to be seen as the legitimate ruler, well couldn't he have still gone with his original plan of forcibly marrying Jasmine to gain the throne after the fact?
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

The Abominable Showman
Member
Oct 25, 2017
116,219
I mean it's the same thing as Aladdin wishing to be a prince. It's almost all aesthetic, Genie just did the rest with his showmanship.
 
Joe

Joe

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,656
his first mistake was turning into a giant snake. that never works out.
 
boxter432

boxter432

The Fallen
Oct 28, 2017
9,375
that's kinda the point? he wanted to be sultan, so he got it....but its just a word. which made him go big and do wish 2...which then led him to Al convincing him to be even more powerful and F himself into a lamp.
 
sir_crocodile

sir_crocodile

Member
Oct 25, 2017
23,558
wasting your first wish is a time-honoured tradition

in the 1940 Thief of Bagdad, Sabu uses his first wish for sausages lol
 
adj_noun

adj_noun

Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
17,335
Winston1 said:
All that seems to do is just give him a fancy new pair of clothes which he ditches 30 seconds later. Jasmine and her father still refuse to acknowledge him as ruler, so it clearly did not change anyone's minds or reality.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I say Jafar was, in fact, made sultan, but people's preconceptions about him changing wasn't part of the wish.

Kinda like Aladdin being a prince but neglecting to request that he be a prince of a specific place. If you dug down into the technicalities there could be a piece of paper somewhere saying that he's the prince of some long-dead nation on a technicality, thus fulfilling the wish.

I mean he got a fun musical number with a horde of extras, so he didn't seem to unhappy about it.

sir_crocodile said:
in the 1940 Thief of Bagdad, Sabu uses his first wish for sausages lol
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

To be fair, it's kinda hard to monkey's paw that one as long as you specifiy what kind of sausages.
 
Digital Dinosaur

Digital Dinosaur

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,091
Rita Repulsa's Moon Palace
The moral of the story is insecurity over your status and image sabotages you, so it's perfectly thematic.

Al wasted his wish because he thought noble blood was required to win people over.

Jafar wasted his wish because despite all his influence and status as a grand vizier who already HAD the sultan eating out of his hand and effectively controlled everything, Jafar was insecure about a title.

Plus it set up the trick because unlike Aladdin who had learned his lesson by then, Jafar required still greater status after sultan.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
50,134
Weird that the sultan and the sultan's daughter don't recognize Jafar as being sultan.

...I'm joking, but I don't remember it that well. Did anyone else recognize it? When Aladdin became a prince he seemed to have servants and stuff.
 
RagnarokX

RagnarokX

Member
Oct 26, 2017
15,820
BasilZero said:
The same way Aladdin wished to become a prince and that literally did nothing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It's kinda funny because the plot kinda hangs on the moral dilemma of Aladdin lying to Jasmine about being a prince, and while he did lie about always being a prince his wish wasn't to be a fake prince. Like, Genie must have given Aladdin a land to rule over.
 
Zippedpinhead

Zippedpinhead

Fallen Guardian
Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,787
BasilZero said:
The same way Aladdin wished to become a prince and that literally did nothing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
hard disagree... I mean we did later find out his dad was the King of the thieves...

Either Genie made him a prince (and his dad a king) or Aladdin was already a prince and Genie did nothing but give him new threads and "make him a star".

Since Genie is all powerful, I choose to believe the former.

Runner said:
It's funny because as the son of the king of theives he was the prince of theives. I love the theory that until he wished it his father wasn't the king but it retroactively changed
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This right here...
 
Leclair

Leclair

Member
May 3, 2021
1,674
Denmark
Runner said:
It's funny because as the son of the king of theives he was the prince of theives.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
plG3A8Nz-600x338.gif
 
Swiggins

Swiggins

was promised a tag
Member
Apr 10, 2018
11,477
RagnarokX said:
It's kinda funny because the plot kinda hangs on the moral dilemma of Aladdin lying to Jasmine about being a prince, and while he did lie about always being a prince his wish wasn't to be a fake prince. Like, Genie must have given Aladdin a land to rule over.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm just imagining a land in the middle of a succession crisis materializing out of thin air.

"The prince has vanished, what the fuck are we gonna do?!"
 
Tavernade

Tavernade

Tavernade
Moderator
Sep 18, 2018
8,702
L Thammy said:
Weird that the sultan and the sultan's daughter don't recognize Jafar as being sultan.

...I'm joking, but I don't remember it that well. Did anyone else recognize it? When Aladdin became a prince he seemed to have servants and stuff.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I always thought the implication was that all the servants were fake Genie constructs. If Aladdin had actual servants or land it'd have come up again later in the movie or TV show but I don't think it's ever acknowledged again outside his outfit.
 
ArjanN

ArjanN

Member
Oct 25, 2017
10,137
adj_noun said:
I say Jafar was, in fact, made sultan, but people's preconceptions about him changing wasn't part of the wish.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Yeah it's this. Although generally magical wish stories don't really work if the wisher is too genre-savvy, i.e. he could have just wished something more broad like "everyone has to be obey me unquestioningly".
 
OP
OP
Winston1

Winston1

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
2,109
adj_noun said:
I say Jafar was, in fact, made sultan, but people's preconceptions about him changing wasn't part of the wish.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

How does that work though? He maybe has some piece of paper now saying that he's the sultan? Will the sultan's men actually obey him just because of that or what?

Again, if he just wanted the title than he should have just stuck with the plan of marrying Jasmine. Classic mistake not to take the cheaper, more mundane route.
 
Triggerhappytel

Triggerhappytel

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,105
He asked to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world... Did he know how powerful that would make him, specifically? He's lucky he could materialise giant hourglasses and turn into a giant snake. What if the most powerful sorcerer when he made this wish could pull rabbits out of hats, and his power upgrade over this was to pull ferrets out of hats?

When you're making wishes that can do almost anything I think you need to be very specific. He should have asked to be a sorcerer with magic power equivalent to a genie. The fool.
 
Pendas

Pendas

Member
Oct 28, 2017
4,716
The wish did turn him into the Sultan though, he gained the title.. The wish doesn't include brainwashing people into obeying and respecting you. People can still form a coup and overthrow him.
 
Version 3.0

Version 3.0

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,266
I always imagined that his wish changed the memories of the people to "know" that he was sultan. So the palace guards, for example, would do as he said instead of the real sultan.

It's still a wasted wish, assuming he could accomplish the same once he was a powerful wizard. But it's not just a change of clothes, like Aladdin got for his prince wish.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.